Torture of Saleem Samad

The Prisoner’s Tale
A journalist recounts his personal story of police abuse and state repression in Bangladesh
BY SALEEM SAMAD

ABIR ABDULLAH/DRIK FOR TIME Truth Hurts: Samad reported the rise of Islamic militancy

“I should kill you,” the high-ranking Dhaka policeman said. He drew his pistol from his holster, shoved me to the floor and pressed the muzzle to my temple. “You are a traitor. You have betrayed your country. How dare you describe the nation as a haven for al-Qaeda and the Taliban?”

My troubles began last November when Britain’s Channel 4 asked me to set up interviews and translate for a crew it was sending to Bangladesh to make a documentary on the state of the country. As a long-time reporter in Bangladesh, I was delighted to take the job. But these are perilous times in my homeland. The government holds power with the help of fundamentalist Islamic groups that are changing Bangladesh’s secular character; local Hindus and Christians are fleeing to neighboring India in the thousands, and the authorities are furious at media reports that Bangladesh is playing host to jihadis from Afghanistan and beyond. Rather than address these concerns, the government has systematically muzzled journalists and opposition leaders who try to get the story out. Since October, more than 4,000 people have been arrested and 44 have died in custody during a government crackdown supposedly directed at organized crime and euphemistically called Operation Clean Heart.

In this environment, foreign reporters are routinely denied visas to Bangladesh. So Channel 4’s crew-British reporter Zaiba Malik and Italian cameraman Bruno Sorrentino-entered as tourists. The authorities were tipped off by a pro-Islamic daily, and we were tailed by police intelligence agents. On Nov. 25, Malik, Sorrentino and Bangladeshi interpreter Priscilla Raj were arrested at the border with India and charged with sedition. I wasn’t with them that day. Hearing of their arrest, I decided to lay low. I slept at a friend’s home and instructed my 18-year-old son to empty our house of my papers and to hide my hard drive. But the police were tapping my brother’s phone, and they heard me tell him where I was. They showed up at my friend’s flat at 3 a.m., and I went peacefully. The government charged me with sedition and conspiracy to defame the country.

At the police station, I was held in a 3-meter-by-4.5-meter cell with up to 15 other detainees. The conditions were foul. There was one squat toilet in the floor of the cell and neither soap nor drinking water. We were told to drink from the toilet tank. On the third day I got dysentery. We slept without blankets on the bare concrete floor. The mosquitoes were relentless.

We were given sodden rice and plain dhal to eat. Every few hours I would be woken up and pulled from the cell to answer questions. The same high-ranking officer who brandished his pistol would force me to sit on the floor with my legs extended so he could thrash my left kneecap with his baton. The police wanted a full accounting of the time I spent with the Channel 4 crew: the places we went, the sources we met. I had done nothing to be ashamed of, so I told them everything I knew.

A military intelligence agent present at these interrogations demanded to know where my hard drive was hidden. He threatened to hurt my son and wife. But I would not give up my life’s work.

Finally, after five days of interrogation, I was loaded into a police van and driven to a prison in Dhaka, where I was given a cell to myself with a sink and enough blankets to make a mattress. The prison hospital gave me painkillers for the throbbing in my knee. Compared to my treatment at the police station, this was luxurious. Then, after 50 days in custody, I was finally released on bail on Jan. 18, thanks in large part to pressure from Paris-based Reporters Without Borders and New York’s Center to Protect Journalists. But the police have yet to return my passport, credit cards, ATM card, mobile phone or address book. And I must still go before the courts to face the charges against me, which carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. I am confident the High Court will acquit me of all charges.

The Channel 4 crew was deported back to Britain before Christmas without suffering physical abuse. But Raj has told me that her interrogators tortured her with electric shocks. Before the arrests, however, the Channel 4 team got 80% of their film footage out of the country. The documentary has yet to be broadcast, but if the world is able to see-and read-how Bangladesh is being transformed into a repressive nation, then the suffering and anxiety I and my family have endured will be worthwhile. But for now, I feel I have emerged from a small jail only to enter another, much larger prison.

I just finished reading your piece on your life in mullatic native land. I am sorry to know the torture and mental anguish you faced in the prison of BNP-Jamaat jote.

Mr. Samad, a few of us were always apprehensive about the rise of defeated forces in Bangladesh. During the first AL government we felt, someday Jamaat would come back and show its diabolic face once again. After the poltiical change over of 1975 our prophecy was materializing step by step.

It was very unfortunate that prior to October 2001 election, a section of US government was sympathetic to the Bangladeshi fundies. But there was another section in US govt which was very much aware of the menacing role of the Islamists. Like in any other country there was constant competing roles in various US govt agencies. Anyway, the aftermath of 9/11 led the majority of US policy makers to come to one conclusion- global Islamic fundamentalism is a threat to mankind.

I tell you my friend, the Bangladeshi fundamentalists will hardly find any friend in US capital in the near future. Your ordeal is well publicized. Some of my friends took the time to circulate your story among various people of power and position in the US govt. Our struggle will continue till we see a dawn of liberty and freedom from the tyranny of dark ages.

Take care and wish you better days.

Sincerely yours,

Jamal Hasan

Note:

A whistle-blower of the secret arrival of the remnants of the Jihadist fleeing Afghanistan after its NATO invasion. His articles in TIME magazine, Tehelka.com and Daily TIMES on the export of Jihadists with full knowledge of the Bangladesh security services invited him trouble. He was twice detained and tortured by military security service (DGFI). He was imprisoned in 2002 for making a documentary for British Channel 4 on the rise of home-grown Islamic vigilante and appalling religious freedom situation. His detention and torture by dreaded DGFI invited international uproar and was released in early 2003. After his release DGFI kept him under surveillance. In 2007 the military-controlled government unilaterally relieved him of sedition charges and two foreign journalists. He has co-authored books and published numerous articles on conflict, terrorism, forced migration and ethnic crisis. After 5 years of painful life in exile he has planned to return home soon. Presently he is living in exile in Canada and unable to return home in fear of persecution.